Welcome to the Youniverse. (122)

For all its positive aspects, the internet has a dangerous and destructive side. Few people are brave enough to express criticism toward this new technology. Lee Siegel is one such brave individual. In Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, he argues that “a rhetoric of freedom, democracy, choice, and access has covered up the greed and blind self-interest that lie behind what much of the Internet has developed into today” (3).

Because of the convenience of the internet – a value that its advocates tout with great passion – our every “impulse is only seconds away from its gratification” (175). Quoting Al Cooper, “‘The Internet provides immediate gratification that affects one’s ability to inhibit previously managed drives and desires.’ In other words, the Internet creates the ideal consumer” (175).

This self-absorbed consumption quickly becomes our dominant experience on the internet. Though it gives the sense of connecting us to others, this is nothing but an illusion. We remain alone before a screen with our own desires at center stage. Put bluntly: “The Internet is the first social environment to serve the needs of the isolated, elevated, asocial individual” (6).

Radical individualism leads to radical democratization and all the negative aspects that accompany it. Sure, the internet allows everyone to participate (everyone with a computer and a modem, that is), but this radical democratization of all things is not necessarily the digital utopia some imagine it to be. One look at YouTube should make this evident.

The internet allows for a wide variety of self-expression. But self-expression is not necessarily art: “art is a form of expression that mysteriously accommodates our experience without actually addressing our particular experience” (53). The vast majority of self-expression in Blogs, and on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, is little more than self-indulgence and self-promotion. Imagination and creativity are rare. The self-expression may be amusing, but rarely moving.

In the world of the internet, the fundamental criterion of success is popularity. And we all know that what is popular is not necessarily good.

Siegel equates the steps necessary to achieve fame on American Idol as identical to what characterizes success on the world wide web. He writes, “You get no sense, watching Idol, that fame is built on accomplishment. Success based on achievement has given way to … success based on selling; fame has given way to popularity” (104).  The contestants do not achieve success on their own terms as much as they are “discovered.” They win, not by establishing their own style, but by mimicking the styles of others.

The radical democratization of the internet undermines the most valuable product of democracy, that is, expertise. Siegel writes, “There is one obstruction, however, to the Internet’s aspiration to make every corner of social life accessible to anyone with a modem. Expertise. That’s why you never hear about the Internet causing a ‘revolution’ in law or medicine, or in electrical contracting, for that matter. Professions and trades require training” (138-139). Despite the hostile accusations of internet utopian dreamers, when it comes to medicine, law, or construction, people want the skill and expertise gained through long hours of instruction, practice, and peer review.

On the internet, the loudest voice drowns out all others. The experts are rejected (or outright vilified) and amateurs (or even worse, complete novices) rule the roost. This is not democracy at work.

Yet a fundamental question presents itself: What is privileged or elite about mastering a skill, or embodying an innate excellence in a craft, and building a life out of that. That is one powerful way in which disadvantaged people leap over social barriers. Democracy is what makes such transformation possible. What the new, crude egalitarianism is doing, in the name of democracy, is allowing the strongest assertion to edge out the most conscientious talent. (140)

The tragic result: “Having made living a life itself a type of professional skill, the Internet has produced another effect. It has created a universal impatience with authority, with any kind of superiority conferred by excellence or expertise” (141). This impatience is evidenced in all manners of community life, and perhaps nowhere more than within the church. Many people reject any semblance of authority or expertise, and assume that religion is a matter of creativity, rather than a matter of the faithful passing-on of an ancient tradition.

Repeatedly, Siegel demonstrates that all criticisms of the internet are ultimately answered by convenience. People argue that it is the “convenience” of the internet that justifies – and even makes up for – all its potential downsides. But is a “convenient life” our goal? Can “convenience” and “commitment” dwell in harmony, or does convenience undermine commitment?

The convenience of creating a world that revolves around one’s own interests and desires may be amusing for a moment, but it does not create and sustain the kind of culture that enriches our shared humanity.

Quotes excerpted from Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob by Lee Siegel

© Richard J. Vincent, 2008